


Second Chances

by xraex21



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 08:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2144160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xraex21/pseuds/xraex21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s something to be said for love. For grief. For letting go of it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Painted from Memory", Season 2 Episode 9. This is set after that episode. 
> 
> For my purposes, Indogene!Kenya got herself a normal lifespan on that little trip she's heading out on. Basically this is a short piece for me to work through the emotions shown in that episode.

There’s something to be said for love. For grief. For letting go of it all.

Stahma’s mother had never raised her to be able to handle these emotions, outside of where they served the men in her life.

Kenya had been different and that is what had made her dangerous. Stahma had taken care of that danger. Done her duty. Put her family above all else, even her heart. But the old ways are cracking under the weight of this new growing world. She has taken her husband’s role, taken his power. Kenya would have been so _proud_.

Stahma feels herself break a little further at that thought. She’s clung to tradition while simultaneously feeding her ambition to tear it apart.

Grief.

So much grief.

No, her mother had not prepared her for something like this.

\------

Sometimes when she’s alone, she can still smell Kenya’s scent in the air. Can still feel the warmth and softness of her skin. The love that had poured off a woman who sold flesh for a living. In those quiet, weak moments Stahma knows herself all too well. She can feel human weakness growing in a Castithan heart.

Yes, this world is changing. And so is she.

\------

It’s been four months since the Indogene took Kenya’s place in Defiance. Since Stahma and her husband dug up a body meant never to be touched again. Since she truly faced what it is she had done.

It’s been four months since Stahma’s heart cracked far deeper than she had ever felt possible.

She holds all the power now and keeps her Datak on a short leash. He’s more one of the men. A hollow, flittering shadow of what he once had been with her by his side. She has found peace in this new balance. In the rise of Castithan women. Slowly tendrils of change have moved from family to family. Small differences felt in every interaction, every decision, and with every cycle of the moon. They have come so far in such a short time. She has come so far.

Yet the weight is there. The whisper of grief and regret. The need for something that has been lost.

That’s why when she sees the Indogene again, the broken fragments of the woman she had loved, does love, she does not turn away. She will be her shield. She’s stronger now. She will protect whatever is left of Kenya, even if it is a lie.

She will love this memory of Kenya as she should have loved the original.

\------

Defiance is messy and broken, but it is their home. Their lives are of politics and war. But this is different, as she holds the Indogene of Kenya to her bare chest in the family bath. As she feels heavy puffs of breath against her neck, she knows that she can fight any battle as long as she can keep this. She will make any sacrifice to protect the woman in her arms.

It’s that knowledge that finally splits her open, letting the love from the original Kenya grow so large that it expands outside of who she is, what she is. It is them now. Just them that matter. Just them that hold the world in this time and place. These moments sway without being grounded in time. Through the heat of the water affection and desire pull at her body, moving as she moves, giving as she gives.

Their time is fleeting, as is everyone's in this new world. But they are learning how to become one, how to break through the cultures that divide them. They are learning how to grow under this new love.

Their love will stand as Defiance stands, unrepentant, unforgiving, and ever-changing.


End file.
